The invention relates to a process for the treatment of a surgical suturing, stitching or sewing thread according to the preamble of claim 1 and to a surgical suturing, sewing or stitching thread produced by this process.
A multithread suture material is known, which for improving the knotting characteristics is coated with approximately 1 to 5% by weight of the dry residue of a substance containing a gel of a fatty acid salt with 6 or more carbon atoms with a polyvalent metal ion in a volatile organic solvent (DE-OS 29 21 810). This multithread suture material is a surgical suturing thread. The preparation of the gel used for coating purposes is, however, time-consuming and expensive. In addition, on coating with the gel substance, at the point where the suturing thread passes out of the said substance it must be drawn through a soft felt pad, in order to strip off excess coating material and obtain an optimum uniform application. However, this felt pad can be relatively rapidly modified and does not guarantee a uniform coating.
The problem of the present invention is therefore to provide a process of the type defined in the preamble of claim 1 for the treatment of a surgical suturing thread, which also improves the knotting characteristics of said thread, but which can be performed in a time-saving and relatively inexpensive manner and which leads to a good uniformity of the coating.